I have talked to "Zircon" several times on the subject as I was interested in trying to get out some elastic properties of the damascus. He informed me that for personal reasons he was unable to continue the work as he was attempting to find some properties in the hoop stress direction. We had some interesting conversions and although I have taken a couple of undergrad metallurgy classes I am not a metallurgist by any stretch of the imagination. As my studies focus on mechanics of materials, specifically composites, that is the research I would like to do on the damascus barrels. I have access to the necessary equipment to get out some tensile and compression data and even some higher strain rate properties. I bid on some 10 ga grade 2 damascus barrels today on ebay but lost. They were cut down to 21'' and I thought they would make a good specimen for research.
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